“Would you care for a drink, sir?” the houseman asked.
“No,” Day said at the doorway.
Lawrence Danielle stood at the French doors, holding the curtain back as he watched outside, and General Murphy, the deputy director of Central Intelligence, spoke on the telephone at the desk, his voice low and gruff. The room smelled of stale cigars and polished wood, and the only light was on the desk, casting the room in deep shadows. They were in crisis here, Day saw. All of them, each for a different reason, or perhaps the same one, had come to Powers for their salvation. Supplicants to the great man who sat on the seventh floor at Langley at the right hand of the president himself. In the days and nights to come he would always remember this exact moment as a watershed, as a bloody continental divide.
“He’s just now touched down—” Danielle started to say, dropping the curtain and turning around. He stopped in midsentence.
“Hello, Lawrence,” Day said.
“What are you doing here?”
“Donald agreed to see me.”
“About what?” Danielle demanded, remaining by the window. Danielle was always the dapper dresser. This evening, however, his tie was loose, his collar open, and his face was red and looked as if he had just run up six flights of stairs. His eyes were bloodshot.
How far to go with this? There was a leak, according to McGarvey. One they hadn’t found yet. One at high levels within the agency. Danielle was number three. General Murphy was number two. And number one had just now landed.
“When did you speak with him?” Danielle asked harshly. “We’re busy here. Maybe yours can wait.”
“This morning,” Day said. “He asked me not to come if it wasn’t terribly important.”
Danielle didn’t move, seeming as if he were listening for something, waiting for something to happen. He hadn’t shaved; a bit of stubble darkened his chin.
“Mexico?” Danielle asked softly.
Day remembered a bit of T. S. Eliot from the old days.
It was from a poem called “The Hollow Men.”
He remembered the exact moment that Trotter had come to him, what seemed like centuries ago, with his story. “Because I trust you,” he’d explained. “Because you’re close to Powers and Yarnell.”
“Yes,” he said, nodding slightly.
General Murphy was gazing across the room at him. “He’s just arrived,” he said into the telephone. “I’ll call you later.” He put down the telephone abruptly, his eyes narrow. He was a big man. An old friend of Powers who had pulled him from the army for duty as deputy director. Where Powers was sophisticated, Murphy was blunt. They made a wonderful team.
“What about Mexico?” he asked menacingly.
“I have some information,” Day said hesitantly. “For the director,” he added.
Murphy and Danielle exchanged glances. From out in the corridor they heard someone coming. Day stepped away from the doorway as Powers came around the corner, his bodyguard just behind him.
“Hello, Leonard,” he said. His bodyguard closed the doors behind him. “It’s confirmed, then?” he asked Murphy.
“I’m afraid it is, Donald,” the DDCI replied.
“Has the president been notified?”
“No.”
“Perhaps you should speak with Leonard first, and then we can get on with it, Mr. Director,” Danielle suggested.
Powers took Day by the arm and led him the rest of the way into the room. “Leonard is a very old friend. My eyes and ears over at Justice, as a matter of fact. Didn’t you know? He understands the essentials. I believe we can trust him on this one.” He turned back to Day. “Isn’t that right?”
Day felt as if he were standing next to a live high-tension wire. A wrong move and he would be killed. Instantly. “Yes, Mr. Director.”
“We’ve discussed the missile crisis, from the legal standpoint,” Powers said. “The latest now is that one of our SR-71 spy planes has unfortunately been shot down thirty miles south of the Mexican border. Not a pleasant bit of news to bring to the president.”
“There are actually missiles then, sir?” Day asked. “It’s certain?”
“It looks like it.”
“God.”
“Yes,” Powers said.
“He’s come with something about Mexico,” Danielle interjected in his quiet voice.
“I thought as much,” Powers said. “What have you got for us, Leonard? What have you found out?”
“And from where?” Danielle added.
Day had always been a cautiously ambitious man. His father had been a banker, but had gone too far too fast and had lost everything he’d worked a lifetime for, after which he had committed suicide. At this moment Day felt as if he were standing on the edge of the same chasm.
“What i have to say is for your ears only, Mr. Director,” he said, girding himself.
Powers patted him on the arm. “It’s all right, believe me.”
“We can step outside for a moment,” Danielle suggested, breaking the sudden awkward silence.
“No,” Powers said without taking his eyes off Day. “We’re terribly busy here, Leonard. I’ve yet to get over to the White House. We’re in a shambles at the moment. It’s going to get rough around the edges.”
Still Day hesitated. Perhaps McGarvey’s original assessment about Basulto’s story was correct. Perhaps there was nothing to it at all. But then who had killed Plónski, who had killed Owens, and why? Something was happening inside of Day. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Yet he knew it had to do with fear of the second kind. The first was concern for oneself, while the second was fear for the world. For existence.
“It’s about Darby Yarnell, Mr. Director,” he said. “I have reason to believe the man is a Soviet spy.”
PART THREE
26
McGarvey had a small room in the Four Seasons Hotel. The place was old but well kept and the bed was reasonably comfortable, though he hadn’t come to sleep. The day had closed in on him, and in the afternoon he had found himself wandering almost aimlessly around the city; first to the White House, as if he thought to catch another glimpse of Yarnell the diplomat; then out to Chevy Chase where he passed his ex-wife’s house, but her Mercedes was not in the driveway and the windows were all dark; and finally, dangerously, past Yarnell’s fortress a block up from the safe house where Trotter’s team was — or had been — doing its job. He’d returned to take a shower and change his clothes, then went down to the bar where he had a beer and a sandwich. They’d wanted him to back down for the moment, the Mexican crisis would first have to be contained, was their argument. But it made increasingly less sense to McGarvey, who was beginning to see that Baranov and whoever worked for him were the Mexican crisis. Yarnell was their only viable lead. At nine he headed on foot back into Georgetown along 29th Street. The traffic was heavy; the air was thick and smelled of exhaust fumes. The brownstone houses were expensive and implacable in their rows, like soldiers at attention. He turned left on R Street, passing Oak Hill Cemetery, the trees standing as natural counterparts to the grave markers, some of which were ornate and monumental, some of which were small and sad, lost in the darkness. At 3 I st Street he stopped and looked up toward Dumbarton Oaks Park. He thought about Marta back in Lausanne. Alone, he hoped. Sad. He’d begun to believe that she had told him the truth, that in the beginning she had watched him for the federal police, but that later she had fallen in love with him. But there wasn’t a thing he could do about, or for, her now. Even if he wanted to do something, which he wasn’t at all sure he did.